MATHEMATICS IN GREEK EDUCATION        25
tion in Egypt, and the study of mathematics in particular, could get none of the Samians to listen to him. He adopted therefore this plan of communicating his arithmetic and geometry, so that it might not perish with him. Selecting a young man who from his behaviour in gymnastic exercises seemed adaptable and was withal poor, he promised him that, if he would learn arithmetic and geometry systematically, he would give him sixpence for each (figure' (proposition) that he mastered. This went on until the youth got interested in the subject, when Pythagoras rightly judged that he would gladly go on without the sixpence. He therefore hinted that he himself was poor and must try to earn his daily bread instead of doing mathematics; whereupon the youth, rather than give up the study, volunteered to pay sixpence himself to Pythagoras for each proposition. We must presumably connect with this story the Pythagorean motto, ' a figure and a platform (from which to ascend to the next higher step), not a figure and sixpence '.l
The other story is that of a pupil who began to learn geometry with Euclid and asked, when he had learnt one proposition, 'What advantage shall I get by learning these things ? * And Euclid called the slave and said, ' Give him sixpence, since he must needs gain by what he learns.'
We gather that the education of kings in the Macedonian period did not include much geometry, whether it was Alexander who asked Menaechmus, or Ptolemy who asked Euclid, for a short-cut to geometry, and got the reply thatc for travelling over the country there are royal roads and roads for common citizens: but in geometry there is one road for all '.2
1	Proclus on Eucl. I, p. 84. 16.
2	Stobaeus, Eel, ii. 31, 115 (vol. ii, p, 228, 30, Wachsmuth).